by Phoebe R. Stubblefield, Interim Director, C.A. Pound Human Identification Laboratory, University of Florida
In 2003-2004, I was prepping for Introduction to Forensic Anthropology by researching state codes specifying when autopsies were conducted. At that time,
- if you died unattended in Washington D.C., your remains were available for educational dissection within 24 hours.
- North Dakota had coroners who were not pathologists, and sometimes were the sheriff
- California still had coroners that collected taxes (but for education)
If the D.C. code is appalling or the others peculiar, they all acquire context (but not necessarily justification, I mean—coroner AND sheriff as the same person!!) when you know the history of death investigation and anatomy instruction in the early United States. Since that time, codes and practices have shifted. Now the D.C. code resembles many others in that unattended deaths are subject to medicolegal investigation and disposition by the next of kin before educational dissection is a possibility.
I make this historical reference in relation to the revelation about the MOVE remains, used in teaching without notification or consent from next of kin (as these remains are not individually identified). I am not justifying the use of forensically derived human remains in general education. Please discuss among yourselves how training of professionals and graduate students applies to educational use.
The exposure of the MOVE remains as educational tools should be seen as an opportunity for American forensic anthropologists and human osteologists to consider our current role in the historical use of human remains in our country, assuming you first know what your state requires or permits. Abiding by state law is, in the 2020s, a cultural minimum. Considering the interests of, or applying compassion for, the decedent and the next of kin is my preferred minimum. This step can be hidden in language of ethical or moral behavior, but I prefer to be frank with myself. Actions that are permissible are not necessarily beneficial.
If you are of a certain professional age, such that you have inherited laboratory space and skeletal teaching collections, now is a good time to consider pursuing a hierarchy of compassionate use of human remains. I don’t consider this a rule. Culturally in the United States, my profession developed from cemetery piracy, but we are fortunate to have progressed out of that phase (thanks in no small part to ventilators and the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act). Readers who are not American, you do you. (We’ll still judge you, but probably after we get through attacking each other.)
I perceive this hierarchy for skeletal remains used in general teaching:
- Anatomical Gifts with traceable documentation
- Commercially obtained human remains
2.1 Consider the mesh of economy and culture at this level, as commercial production can range from burking to anatomical gifting, and derive from First World cultural interests and Third World economic development. Don’t assume every culture has the same interest in controlling the dead.
- Anatomical donations predating the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act, but contextuallyrecognized or recently documented for educational use.
- Curated collections in public institutions with traceable documentation
- Curated collections without documentation
- Remains derived from forensic or other death investigation
The final two levels require the most caution, awareness of state and federal laws, and benefit from consideration of what the decedent or next of kin intended.
My professional training began in these lowest hierarchical levels. When the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (1990) was established, I did not have the knowledge or compassion to react positively. It wasn’t until the late nineties that I learned, and internally valued, that NAGPRA gave Natives what was rightfully theirs, including their dead.
I did not immediately extend that realization to the population of forensic dead, but passage of Florida code 406.135(2), which restricts access of autopsy-related media to the next of kin, and code 406.11(2)(b), which restricts research without consent of next of kin, expanded my awareness that families want to control their dead. NAGPRA applies to Native Americans, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians. There isn’t similar code to protect African Americans who historically, for social and economic reasons, could not control their dead. Nor is there protective code to apply to any population too poor or distracted, aside from the state code in effect. As I said, following code is the minimum, it technically is an acceptable minimum, but it may not be a culturally relevant, fashionable, or decedent- and next of kin-focused minimum.
In addition to revisiting the trauma to the Africa families, the MOVE remains media coverage and discussions reveal a painful stage in the cultural shift for how we American educators and professionals are or want to be using human remains. If you are an osteologist or forensic anthropologist, and not already exposed like Alan Mann and Janet Monge, this may be your time to discretely and carefully review your state law, inventory every cabinet and drawer, and meditate on your relationship with the decedents in your possession and their kin.
In another generation there may be forensic anthropologists and human osteologists who can say their education only included consensually obtained human remains.
About the author: Phoebe R. Stubblefield, Interim Director of the C.A. Pound Human Identification Laboratory, returned to the University of Florida in 2018, having become a doctoral Gator in 2002. She began her forensic training with the founder of the Pound Lab, forensic anthropologist William R. Maples, as his last doctoral student. In addition to her current role as lead forensic anthropologist for the Tulsa Race Massacre recovery, she has initiated an interdisciplinary research program for the Pound lab. Her most referenced works include, “The Anatomical Diaspora: Evidence of Early American Anatomical Traditions in North Dakota,” and with co-authors “The structure and rate of late Miocene expansion of C4 plants: Evidence from lateral variation in stable isotopes in paleosols of the Siwalik series, northern Pakistan,” which includes her analysis of the section paleomagnetic chronology. The paleomagnetism project was not a fluke—Stubblefield prefers a four-field, interdisciplinary focus for collaborations and research in biological anthropology.
Photo: Phoebe Stubblefield working in the C.A. Pound Human Identification Laboratory. Credit: UF.